“I know it. My old friend, were, he even inclined to this alliance, could never coerce her; and Mary Leicester has long since learned to distinguish between the agreeable qualities of a clever man and the artful devices of a treacherous one. She knows him; she reads him thoroughly, and as thoroughly she despises him. I will not say that her impressions have been unaided; she received more than one letter from a kind friend—Lady Kilgoff; and these were her first warnings. Poor Corrigan knows nothing of this; and Mary, seeing how Linton's society was pleasurable to the old man, actually shrank from the task of undeceiving him. 'He has so few pleasures,' said she to me one evening; 'why deny him this one?'—'It is a poison which cannot injure in small doses, doctor,' added she, another time; and so, half jestingly, she reasoned, submitting to an intimacy that was odious to her, because it added a gleam of comfort to the chill twilight of his declining life.”
“And you are sure of this—you are certain she will refuse him?” cried Cashel, eagerly.
“I am her confidant,” said Tiernay; “and you see how worthily I repay the trust! Nay, nay! I would not tell these things to any other living; but I feel that I owe them to you. I have seen more misery in life from concealment, from the delicacy that shuns a frank avowal, than from all the falsehood that ever blackened a bad heart. Mary has told me all her secrets; ay—don't blush so deeply—and some of yours also.”
Cashel did indeed grow red at this speech, and, in his effort to conceal his shame, assumed an air of dissatisfaction.
“Not so, my dear young friend,” said Tiernay; “I did not mean to say one word which could offend you. Mary has indeed trusted me with the secret nearest to her heart She has told me of the proudest moment of her life.”
“When she rejected me?” said Cashel, bitterly.
“So was it—when she rejected you,” re-echoed Tiernay. “When poor, she refused wealth; when friendless in all that friendship can profit, she declined protection; when almost homeless, she refused a home; when sought by one whom alone of all the world she preferred, she said him nay! It was at that moment of self-sacrifice, when she abandoned every thought of present happiness and of future hope, and devoted herself to one humble but holy duty, she felt the ecstasy of a martyr's triumph. You may think that these are exaggerations, and that I reckon at too exalted a standard such evidences of affection, but I do not think so. I believe that there is more courage in the patient submission to an obscure and unnoticed fortune, beset with daily trials and privations, than in braving the stake or the scaffold, with human sympathies to exalt the sacrifice.”
“But I offered to share this duty with her; to be a son to him whom she regarded as a father.”
“How little you know of the cares—the thoughtful, watchful, anxious cares—you were willing to share! You could give wealth and splendor, it is true; you could confer all the blandishments of fortune, all the luxuries that rich men command; but one hour of gentle solicitude in sickness—one kind look, that recalled years of tenderness—one accustomed service, the tribute of affection—were worth all that gold could purchase, told ten times over. And these are not to be acquired; they are the instincts that, born in childhood, grow strong with years, till at length they form that atmosphere of love in which parents live among their children. No! Mary felt that it were a treason to rob her poor old grandfather of even a thought that should be his.”
“But, I repeat it,” cried Cashel, passionately, “I would participate in every care; I would share her duties, as she should share my fortunes.”